I'm a husband, father, author, cyclist, sailor, travel addict, and former Silicon Valley software engineer. I've written 3 books and actively review books on this blog.
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Wednesday, May 17, 2017

After I decided that the S7 was unacceptable, I had a dilemma. I could not go back to my 2015 Moto G, because I had given it to my mom so she could have an unlocked phone in Singapore. It seemed as though I had to give up on my desire for waterproofing as a core feature. The chipset that has the best battery life at the moment is the Snapdragon 625. Unlike the chipsets in the 800 series (or even the siblings in the 600 series), the 625 was actually designed for power efficiency. It was featured in the Moto Z Play phone last year, and while most phones don't get mentioned 6 months after they launch, the Moto Z Play is still getting rave reviews for stellar battery life.

I somehow missed all the deals for the Moto Z Play, but the Moto G5 Plus launched recently, and uses the same chipset. Even better, if you have an Amazon Prime membership, you get $60 off for the 4GB RAM/64GB Storage version. My experience with the Blu R1 HD is that the Amazon add-ons to the phone aren't obtrusive, especially if you have lots of storage and so can forgive the non-deletable pre-installed apps. Having learned my lesson about storage, I decided to go for the larger storage version. 4GB of RAM can't hurt, since I did notice that the Moto G 2015 did frequently run with very little free space.

Compared with the Moto Z Play, the Moto G5 Plus has:

Smaller screen (5.2" vs 5.5")

No NFC (the European versions have NFC but no compass!) NFC is nice, but as far as I can tell, none of the phone payment methods have really taken off, so it's a non issue. The compass is very useful when using any navigation apps, so I really appreciate that the US version has the compass.

No Moto Mods (no big deal --- as of date there are no Moto Mods worth the price or weight or bulk)

Lighter (156g vs 165g)

Different camera (can't tell whether it's any better or worse, just different)

4GB RAM (vs 3GB)

64GB storage (vs 32GB storage)

micro-USB vs USB C (this is a feature as far as I'm concerned --- no need to buy new cables!)

No full-time "OK Google". (would have been nice to have, but I didn't have it on the 2015 Moto G or the S7 either!)

Except for the smaller screen (and it seriously would have been nice to have an AMOLED screen), it didn't seem like it would have much of a compromise. In fact, in other ways (storage and RAM), the G5 Plus seems like the better phone.

I bought the phone and got the free same day shipping. It arrived and I immediately tried the "transfer data from a nearby phone" feature of Android 7.0. Oh wow, Google Play Services crashed! And crashed! And crashed! I finally rebooted the phone and went back to setting up my phone the traditional way.

After the setup, the phone was fast! Browsing, e-mail, and even taking pictures is reasonably fast with next to no lag. I was also very impressed by one of the new Moto gestures, which is to use the fingerprint reader as a substitute for the on-screen navigation buttons, recovering several pixels worth of space from the bottom of the screen. In fact, on-screen navigation buttons take up about 0.3inches of screen space, which effectively means that the 5.2inch screen on the Moto G Plus is now equivalent to the 5.5inch screen on the Moto Z Play! This is a great move and I wonder why other manufacturers don't do it.

Sound quality and bluetooth seemed to work better than my 2015 Moto G, which would get audio stutter whenever a music player was being asked to multi-task with any other app. I guesss I was CPU limited but didn't even know it.

And wow, storage! I didn't realize how constricted I'd been until I started installing apps and after more than 100 apps on the system the device still proclaimed that I had used only 6.84GB out of 53.71 on the internal storage. My 64GB micro SD card was definitely getting worked more., since it's the default storage location for photos, videos, etc.

Note that both Moto Z Play and the Moto G5 Plus have headphone jacks, which is very nice since one of our cars and many of our high quality audio headphones still use the traditional system. In fact, none of the other Moto Z phones were ever under consideration because of this missing feature. I hope the Android ecosystem continues to thumb its collective noses at Apple's "courage" with regards to this user hostile move.

The physical device feels slippery (I have no idea why anyone thinks that metal is superior to plastic for devices that you need to handle). At 156g, the device is pretty much the same as my old Moto G. Interestingly enough, the charger's much lighter than the one that came with the Moto X Pure. The Moto X Pure's charger is 110g (integrated cable), while the Moto G's charger is 52g with a 21g cable. The Samsung's charger was 42g by comparison.

Surprisingly, I found myself using the fingerprint scanner. That's because it was fast and consistent. I wouldn't put up with it otherwise. Similarly, I found myself using the gestures to turn the screen off (hold the finger print sensor for 1s), or bring up Google assistant (hold the fingerprint sensor past the haptic feedback buzz). I thought the fingerprint scanner would be a gimmick, but it's turned out to be quite reasonable. (The Samsung also used it for Samsung Pay, but with no NFC obviously I'm not going to be able to use Google Pay anyway!)

And yes, ridewithgps works using Firefox on the Moto G5 Plus. One pleasant surprise is that WiFi calling works on T-mobile using the Moto G5 Plus, without any special configuration. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that's the only feature I got from Nougat that was noteworthy.

Battery life has been nothing short of incredible, coming from both the S7 and the Moto G 2015. I regularly end the day plugging the phone in and seeing that the battery level is at 40%. This gives me hope that running Live Tracking while riding all day won't kill the battery on the phone.

All in all, I'll be keeping the phone for a while. The lack of waterproofing bothers me, but I guess I'll pack away my phone when it rains into a waterproof bag.